the rain came
as without as within
and the morning too
an opera of birds
breakfast we ate
the boy and I
two chairs sat
three unspoken
spoon and plate
chattering
to the puddles
of wax
I was too numb
to clean
and the floor
was dirty
as it would be
for days
his footprints
the heart
I didn't have
to sweep away
as the rain
swept his blood
into the soil
through the night
8 comments:
Dark and Sublime!
Will come back :)
Thanks WBO.
Welcome.
Who's the boy you ate with in the poem?
this scene is the mother and her son on the morning after the husband/father was slain in the field just outside their cottage. the mother could not sleep, candles burning through the rainy night til light, when the boy awoke, and mother and son had breakfast without words.
The last five or six poems have a linked narrative, an old warrior slain before wife and child in the fields outside his home.
How sad!
Exquisitely expressed, I must say.
A particular comment that I have spoken time and time again and only more true with each piece of writing that I read of yours is an extraordinary ability to communicate the world in a word, or couple of words, the space unfilled of a third plate, the rain outside reflecting that within, the floor that will remain dirty, footprints in the heart, and the powerfully affecting lines that speak of sweeping. The silence, above all, the quietness of both son and mother, the quiet absence of father, is observable, likewise the morning, the new day, the rain that comes as it has come many times before, the birds, life, sustenance (breakfast), already physically, repeatedly, the being of father and husband are disappearing. Exceedingly evocative poem.
Sweetest Sunshine, thank you for the very kind words. There are not many poems I've written that I like, but this is one of them. I think I'm influenced by the images of candles giving their life to the night, listening as candles do, giving light, warm, giving their very essence so that others might see. The image of the woman, a young woman, alone, both alone and alone, wondering what the morning will bring, what she will do, what she will say, in the morning, that, is the heart of this poem.
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